Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Possibly I am overreacting, but I'm still sad about it

Yesterday started out on a bad note. Not that I really believe in signs or omens or anything like that, but when I walked out to go to work and found my car covered in (presumably) animal blood, I did kind of wonder if the universe was trying to tell me something.

So, I think some small animal met its untimely death on the top of my car. I didn’t notice it when I put my bag in the passenger side, but when I walked around to the driver’s side, I saw a sizeable pool of blood on the top of my car. Not person-sized, but definitely more than you’d see if maybe two animals got into a fight. Then I noticed that the windshield, hood, and side of my car had blood splatter all over them. It was disgusting, and for me, it was almost unbearably sad.

Obviously, I had to go get a car wash, although it almost seemed disrespectful to whatever it was that died. Driving the car . . . well, I don’t know if you’ve ever had to drive a car splattered with blood, but I wouldn’t recommend the experience. I couldn’t turn on my windshield wipers because I was afraid that, instead of cleaning the blood off the windshield, it would just smear it. Then I wouldn’t be able to see, plus I’d look like I’d been in some sort of hit and run accident. So I just had to peer through the blood pattern. I also didn’t want to drive too fast for fear of causing the blood on the top of the car to fly off and hit other vehicles on the road. Fortunately, the car wash wasn’t far.

The car wash experience wasn’t exactly cathartic. I went through one of those touchless/brushless car washes at the gas station. I don’t know how other people would feel watching blood wash down their windshield, but I felt pretty awful. I thought for sure that I was going to either cry or throw up in my car, but I managed to not do either. Of course, the car wash didn’t get all the spots off, so I still had to go use one of those scrubber/squeegee tools at the gas pump. The whole experience was just . . . it was gross, of course. But it was mostly just depressing. Heaping a final bit of indignity on the late whatever-it-was by scraping its remains off with a squeegee so I could go to work and get on with my life.

I wanted to find the humor in it because that’s how I normally deal with unpleasant situations. Even if I’m complaining, it’s usually really just an offer to others to laugh. That’s kind of the whole point of my blog. If I can make myself or other people laugh at a situation, then I don’t mind it, it’s not that bad. But I couldn’t laugh at this. I accept the whole cycle of life/food chain part of living in theory. I get it. But in practice, I’m just not that comfortable with violent death, be it a person, an animal, or even an insect. Don’t get me wrong, I will kill any bug that I think might kill me or that’s carrying disease (looking at you, evilroaches), but I still feel bad about it.

And then of course, all my food seemed disgusting to me after that because everything reminded me of the blood all over my car. It didn't help that I have OCD (ok, self-diagnosed, but . . . trust me), so all day, it's all I could think about and picture in my mind. Buckwheat muffins? Yep. Yogurt? Yep. Grapes? Yep. Tomatoes? Well, obviously. I couldn’t bring myself to eat the tomatoes.

I feel a little bit better about it today. I just keep telling myself that this really is just how life is, and we can’t all live to be really old and then slip away peacefully in our sleep. But I still don’t think I’ll get to the point where I can laugh about it.

Instead, I’m distracting myself by being irritated at a coworker who SAYS she had food allergies but then eats all the stuff that she says she can’t have. And then offers it to me. And then I have to bite my tongue to keep from saying, “No, I am ACTUALLY allergic to that, and since I don’t feel like stabbing myself with my epi pin today, I’m going to pass. And if you eat that donut in front of me, if you talk to me about eating that donut, if I can smell the sugar glaze on your breath, I SWEAR I WILL KILL YOU.” I find a little bit of irritation goes along way in distracting me from sad stuff. So that’s what I’m going with.

And I recognize that I'm talking about killing someone after whining about the sadness of some animal's demise. Whenever I threaten to kill someone (pretty much daily), whether out loud (other drivers on the road) or in my head (to my coworkers), to use one of my favorite lines from a t.v. show, "that is what is known as an 'empty threat.'" But it does make me feel better, so I don't know what that says about me.